


Broken

by zillah975



Series: An Unkindness of Ravens [9]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 14:58:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9390065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zillah975/pseuds/zillah975
Summary: The charade is over. What now?





	

Seyahat turns Scudder towards Tem'ria’s small tree home deep in the forest atop Teldrassil. She’s back in her own armor, wearing her own face again. The charade is over.  
  
Tem'ria is waiting for her when she lands, Ash perched on the eaves of her home and grooming himself. Seya dismounts and sends Scudder off to graze, and she and Tem'ria embrace. “Come inside, thero'shan,” Tem'ria murmurs. “I think you have much to tell me.” Her voice is a gentle hand smoothing Seya’s frayed nerves.  
  
“I didn’t mean to end it so soon,” Seya says as she follows her in. “I didn’t mean to end it until he was dead!”  
  
Tem'ria already has a small fire going, and she puts a little iron kettle over it to heat. It’s shaped like a dragon, its roaring mouth the spout. “What happened to change your mind?”

Seya scowls and throws herself down onto the inky linen cushions near the fire. “That wretched Draenei, Arshaavir. He claims to be a follower of the Light but he won’t shift his plated backside to  _do_  anything!”  
  
Tem'ria regards her calmly, and Seya shrinks a little under her gaze. “And he convinced you to reveal yourself?”  
  
“What? No! Self-righteous bag of kodo wind,” Seya mutters angrily. “He’s a fool, he couldn’t convince me of moonrise if I was watching it myself.” She pulls off her gloves and tosses them onto the low wooden table, then stares at the fire, nibbling the edge of her thumb until it stings. “He made me angry,” she admits at last. “Nattering on to Ravenhul about forgiveness as if he doesn't  _know_  what that monster does.”  
  
“Why did you go in the first place?” Tem'ria asks.  
  
Seya shrugs, watching the dragon. Little wisps of steam are beginning to rise from its mouth. “I underestimated how much support they had,” she says. “I had hoped for fewer people, or at least fewer people cheering them on. Hoped to catch him alone and end this. End  _him_.”  
  
Tem'ria nods, and reaches for the small ceramic pot where she stores her tea. She begins scooping it into the little teapot. “Would you really have killed your friend’s lover in front of her?”  
  
The question sets Seya’s heart pounding in her chest, and her face feels hot. She snorts derisively. “Why should I care? She brought this on herself!”  
  
Tem'ria chuckles. “Now you sound like Araane.”  
  
Seya shoves herself to her feet and paces over to the door. Outside the moon is hidden by clouds, and she can smell rain on the air. Thunderclouds are gathering in the east. “Maybe she’s right,” she snaps. “I’d be dead if Araane hadn’t been following me that day, if she hadn’t managed to catch me in her claws – she almost died herself trying to break my fall! She risked her own life for me!” She spins and faces her teacher. “Do you know what  _Hooves_  said, when she found out that Ravenhul had sent an assassin for me?” She flutters her hands helplessly, her tone mocking. “‘Don’t you want me to have friends? Don’t you want me to have bridesmaids?’"   
  
The rage flares up inside her, memories of so many conversations catching like tinder and fueling the flame. "She asked me to be  _in_  her wedding to one who wants to see me dead! All she ever thinks of is herself! What she wants, what’s convenient for her!” She grips the door frame, glaring at Tem'ria. “She tells him to stop killing her friends, but she cares  _nothing_  for the defenseless he slaughters like rats! Their lives and deaths are no more to her than if they  _were_  rats! Less!” Seya slams her fist into the door frame, and the pain is a sweet shock up her arm. She does it again, and a third time, before Tem'ria reaches for her.  
  
“Thero'shan, I’d like to keep my home, and your hand, in one piece, if it’s all the same to you,” she says mildly.  
  
Seya jerks out of her grip and storms down the walkway to the grass below. “My apologies, shan'do,” she says between gritted teeth. Tem'ria follows close behind. “But I don’t see why I should care for someone who cares nothing for me.”  
  
“Yet any fool can see how much you do care,” Tem'ria says gently.  
  
“Well,” Seya growls, “I’m going to stop.”  
  
Tem'ria regards her thoughtfully. “I think you would have to change your nature to do it, thero'shan. And I think it might break you as thoroughly as anything that Sin'dorei can do.”  
  
Seyahat sighs. Her fury is already fading. “I don’t know, maybe,” she says. “Maybe I’m already broken.”

The sound of the kettle’s whistle reaches them from inside the house, and they both turn and go back up. Seya’s steps feel heavy. Tem'ria takes the kettle off and pours for the tea, and Seyahat curls up on the cushions again. “So where do things stand now that he knows you’re alive?” Tem'ria asks.  
  
Seya rubs the back of her neck wearily and shakes her head. “Same as always,” she sighs. “Hooves was furious, Ravenhul was abject, and she forced some worthless apology from his lying mouth. I told him to change his ways, he called me a harlot.” Tem'ria snorts a laugh, and Seya chuckles. “That did lead to an interesting exchange with a little Goblin fellow named Dosin,” she adds. “He’s in Dawnstar Fleet, I think he said.”  
  
Tem'ria’s eyebrows rise. “Captain, if I’ve heard right. What did he say to you?”  
  
Seya grins crookedly. “First he threatened to kill me, and then he propositioned me,” she says, and chuckles, shaking her head. “No wonder he and Ravenhul are friends.”  
  
“And did you offer him the edge of your blade?” Tem'ria asks with a smirk.  
  
“Actually, no,” Seya says, feels her cheeks heating again. “He was…oddly engaging. And he had a refreshing straightfowardness that I quite liked.”  
  
Tem'ria laughs. “Now that would be an affair. Our Nightrunner and the Captain of the Dawnstar Fleet. You could go to sea together, become pirates!”  
  
Seya laughs with her and shakes her head. “Can’t imagine he was serious,” she says, and then her laughter fades, and she regards Tem'ria in the low light. Outside the rain is beginning to fall, fat drops pattering against the house and the leaves and the earth. “There was a time when I believed that Ravenhul could change,” she says quietly. “That his promises might mean something. And there was a time I thought if he can’t be killed, then he could be captured,” she goes on, “and…what is it the humans say of their horses? Be 'broken to the bridle’? Trained, and made to behave.”  
  
Tem'ria gives a shudder. “Poor creatures. I don’t know how they stand it.”  
  
Seya nods. “You know I’ve got five of the beasts at my farm now, bought them from that woman in Stormwind. I’d like to have more, but there are only so many I can care for.”  
  
“And you’d do that to a person?” Tem'ria asks doubtfully.  
  
Seya shoots her a glare. “The horses have never made someone cry out for a stranger before they beheaded him.”  
  
Tem'ria tilts her head in a nod. “Fair enough.”  
  
“If he would keep to killing only those who are armed and armored,” Seya blurts, “and if he let his enemies meet their deaths with honor, maybe it could be different! I know as well as anyone that vengeance does nothing for the dead.”  
  
“And our people are at war,” Tem'ria says. She pours the fragrant tea into cups for each of them, and hands Seya one. “We all do what we must.”  
  
Seya nods. “But he does more than that. He uses cruelty to no purpose! He indulges his sadism against those least able to defend themselves and who can offer him nothing but their misery and their deaths.” Seya glares into the flames, her heart twisting. “If Hooves and this Arshaavir can forgive him, that’s between them and the Light they claim to follow. But I think Elune calls on us to defend those who can’t defend themselves, not with platitudes, but with our cunning, with our weapons, with our very lives if need be. She is the light I follow.”  
  
Thunder rolls in the distance, a beckoning sound, and moonlight glints through a break in the clouds. Seya watches the flames dance and wonders what to do next.


End file.
